This invention relates to a technique for monitoring an IP data network to verify whether customer bandwidth demand (as constrained by access bandwidth limitations) is satisfied, as well as to determine whether to provision additional customers.
Providers of data communications services, such as ATandT, are currently experiencing increasing customer demand. For example, customers of ATandT now make use of its data network to transmit digitized voice, video, and multimedia, in addition to traditional numeric data. The increased volume of customer data has lead to increased demand for bandwidth. To that end, many large users of data communications services often require their service providers meet certain bandwidth requirements and impose financial penalties during intervals while such requirements go unsatisfied.
Heretofore, providers of IP data communications services have attempted to measure customer bandwidth demand in accordance with hourly measurements of link utilization and packet loss. Unfortunately, hourly link utilization measurements hide random fluctuations in bandwidth demand. Measuring packet loss fails to provide a proactive measure of a lack of bandwidth as often occurs after the customer bandwidth demand has been denied.
Thus, there is a need for a technique for measuring customer bandwidth demand that provides a more accurate determination of whether in fact customer demand is being met with a prescribed statistical level of confidence, thereby allowing for more accurate decision making regarding provisioning of new customers.
Briefly, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the invention, a method is provided for monitoring an IP data network to verify whether customer bandwidth demand (as constrained by access bandwidth limitations) is satisfied, as well as for determining whether to provision a new customer via a downlink to an access router connected via at least one uplink to other elements (e.g., hub routers) in a backbone IP data network. Periodically, the utilization of each uplink connecting the access router within the backbone data network is measured on a granular level, typically every 2-5 minutes. Thereafter, using these measurements the bandwidth fulfillment at each access router is verified in accordance with the given confidence level. Such a check is made by comparing whether the mean uplink utilization of the access router is less than a prescribed threshold value. If the bandwidth fulfillment at each router is satisfied (representing the potential for provisioning additional customers), then a check is made whether in fact a new customer can be provisioned while still maintaining bandwidth fulfillment requirements for both the new customer and the existing customers. Such a check is made by comparing whether the predicted link utilization, as established from the bandwidth usage of existing customers and the required bandwidth needed by the new customer, is less than a prescribed threshold value. If the predicted utilization value does not exceed the prescribed threshold value, then new customer provisioning can occur while still assuring adequate bandwidth for the existing customers. Otherwise, no new customer provisioning should occur.